OK, so this was pretty good. Peter J Williams has a Ph.D. from Cambridge, works for Tyndale House and has debated the likes of Bart Ehrman on public radio. The man knows his stuff. He recently published a book titled Can We Trust the Gospels?. I’m halfway through it now and I’d highly recommend it to anyone just for the gold-mine that is in Chapter 3 alone. It’s really, really good. Anyway, whoever the brain trust is behind the Richard Dawkins Foundation’s Twitter account thought they’d try and tango with Peter.
More jollity https://t.co/1NsdnYNd1S
— Peter J. Williams (@DrPJWilliams) January 9, 2019
Yeah, they asserted the old “Jesus probably never even existed” canard. You may have heard their arguments: There are all these pagan parallels, the gospels contradict themselves, they’re probably not based on eyewitness accounts, the gospels are written late, “shouldn’t there be a lot more evidence?”, etc.
Anyway, saying this stuff to a historian is like telling a scientist that adding fluoride to drinking water makes people stupid and docile. Anyway, Pete did not hold back in making them look rather silly, using their own methods to disprove that the Emperor Tiberius probably never existed either. Behold this thread in all its glory:
Coins with his picture are also fakes. How can one person have so many different shapes of nose? pic.twitter.com/Lv7eiqqlmE
— Peter J. Williams (@DrPJWilliams) December 18, 2018
Manuscript records about Tiberius in Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio only survive from the ninth century. Trusting them is clearly as irrational as taking someone today as a source for #robinhood #joanofarc etc.
— Peter J. Williams (@DrPJWilliams) December 18, 2018
Anyway, Tacitus and Velleius Paterculus offer incompatible portraits of Tiberius, so their testimony cancels each other out.
— Peter J. Williams (@DrPJWilliams) December 18, 2018
They also named places after him, like Tiberias. That was part of their plan to make him more believable.
— Peter J. Williams (@DrPJWilliams) December 18, 2018
In order to explain why Tiberius never appeared in Rome, they came up with the brilliant idea that he spent most of his time in Capri (where members of the ruling Collective also built residences for themselves, whose remains can be seen today).
— Peter J. Williams (@DrPJWilliams) December 18, 2018
So, believers in Tiberius, where’s your evidence?
The burden of proof is clearly on those who believe such an unlikely figure existed.
— Peter J. Williams (@DrPJWilliams) December 18, 2018
I felt pretty special when Peter liked my reply:
— Is Jesus Alive? (@IsJesusAlive) January 9, 2019
I’d definitely recommend checking out his debate with Ehrman, which you can listen to here:
Also, this talk here on the reliability of the gospels is pretty mind-blowing. A lot of it is in the material he covers in chapter 3 of his new book. It’s a great listen, but you’ll want the book to have it all in print so you can refer back to again and again:
Finally, if you like this kind of spoof on Jesus-mythicism, the 19th-century British logician Richard Whately wrote a whole book called Historic doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte. You can read it free here.
Erik is the creative force behind the YouTube channel Testify, which is an educational channel built to help inspire people’s confidence in the text of the New Testament and the truth of the Christian faith.
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